Putin's Worldview, the Slavic Soul, and a Secular Apocalypse
We, in the West, cherish our liberal intellectual heritage: our free markets, our individual freedom and liberties, our republican form of limited government, and our practice of electing national leaders to office for short terms in office, with clearly defined responsibilities and limits. From his recent comments, it is clear that Vladimir Putin sees things much differently. Those things we tend to cherish are anathema to him. He is in every sense an dictatorial autocrat, but also a self-professed Russian Orthodox Christian with an incomprehensible worldview to most in the West (identified in recent Russian academic thought as Eurasian Nationalist Bolshevism). Putin loathes what he sees as western decay and decadence. America is responsible for many of the evils in the West which he deplores.
Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is only the most recent in a series of military endeavors which are the logical outcome (perhaps the necessity) of his view of Russia and his hoped-for recovery of lost empire. He seems obsessed with his personal role in determining just what that Russian future might be. “How will history remember me?” We will think of him as a tyrannical war-criminal who will go down in memory as a despised butcher of non-combatants. But he thinks of himself as the savior of the Slavic people, a man who is recovering the Slavic soul—a heroic effort for which those living in the future Russia will venerate him for generations to come.
I find myself continually frustrated by much of cable news analysis coming from the 24/7 news channels and the legion of retired American generals and political wonks who strive to understand Putin through the lens of American partisan politics and western categories. Yes, the battlefield tactics and outcomes are important, and we are well-served here by those who know Russian military doctrine and capabilities. Yes, I am interested in what NATO can do for Ukraine as well as in the dramatic changes in the modern battlefield and its weaponry. But I also want to know what makes Putin tick. Is he a mad-man? Has his personality dramatically changed over time, as some have claimed? Why take the risk he has taken in invading Ukraine? Why the brutality and indifference to the suffering of not only Ukrainians, but even to his own people due to the crushing economic sanctions his actions brought down upon them?
Thankfully, I came across some credible and helpful answers to my questions about Putin’s view of the world. Waller Newell, a professor of political philosophy at Carleton University, is the the author of Tyrants: Power, Injustice, and Terror (Cambridge University Press, 2016), and the forthcoming Tyranny and Revolution: Rousseau to Heidegger (Cambridge University Press, 2021). In a recent essay, Vladimir Putin, Tyrant, Newell gives us a cogent and clear-eyed look at what it is, exactly, that drives Putin to do the things he is doing in Ukraine and elsewhere. This essay (and the podcast interview with Newell referenced below) brought about a complete category reset in how I see Putin and his recent actions. Both are highly recommended.
In Vladimir Putin, Tyrant, Newell sets the stage for discussing the contrasting worldviews described above, reminding us of how our foreign policy professionals see Putin’s actions vastly different than he does.
When Vladimir Putin sent Russian forces into Crimea in 2014, then-Secretary of State John Kerry professed bewilderment that such imperial aggression could happen in the modern age. It was like something out of “the 19th century.” Kerry’s reaction to Putin’s recent invasion of Ukraine was equally baffled, as the patrician American diplomat lamented that the war would distract Putin from working with him on climate change. Common to both reactions was the astonishment that the material calculations and preoccupations of Western democracies might be blown away by a resurgence of old-fashioned tyrannical ambition.
What does Putin actually want?
It’s not that he doesn’t want prosperity for Russia. His early popularity was based on stabilizing the ruble. But the economy must rightfully take a distant second place to restoring Russia’s national pride and dignity after what he views as the “catastrophe” of the Soviet empire’s humiliating defeat in the Cold War. Our foreign policy experts too often forget that dictators like Putin don’t have to worry about public opinion and economic performance the same way that democratically elected leaders do. Rulers for life, they can put these to one side for prolonged periods of time in service of the greater goal of national honor.
Why would Putin decry the old Soviet system?
Although Putin’s ambition is to restore Russian control over its former Warsaw Pact captive states, he in no way wishes to restore the Soviet regime itself. Russian history has long been riven by a cultural conflict between those who look to Europe, the West, and the Enlightenment as the path that Russia should follow and those who are loyal to Slavic nationalism, which is deeply religious and not interested in economic prosperity. In literature, this divide was typified by the different outlooks of Turgenev and Dostoyevsky, which Tolstoy crystallized as the difference between St. Petersburg and Moscow. During the era of anti-Soviet dissidence, this split was typified by Sakharov and Solzhenitsyn. Putin is in the Slavophile camp. A devotee of Berdyaev, a Slavophile critic of Marxism-Leninism, Putin believes that Soviet communism was an import of European rationalism that poisoned the authentic Russian soul, which has nourished the country’s national and artistic greatness.
How will it end?
Putin is therefore a rational actor only to a point, and in a very different way from how that is understood in the West. His aims are for Russia to be honored, feared and powerful. He is no Hitler or Ahmadinejad, willing to pursue his imperial ambitions to the point where he and Russia risk going down in flames in a final Götterdämmerung, like Hitler in his bunker. But Putin is ready to go a very great deal further in pursuing his ambitions than elected democratic leaders are—a fact that he knows, and which he believes gives him a key advantage in his confrontation with the West. He is willing to march up to the very edge of a general war in Europe, or perhaps even cross that line, and he is willing to put the Russian people through extreme material deprivation rather than settle for a slice of the pie as measured out by foreign powers. Honor and national pride come first. That is why we need to remind ourselves over and over again that the ambition to tyrannize and a lust for honor at the expense of material self-interest are unalterable features of human nature.
You can read the essay here: Vladimir Putin, Tyrant. I cannot recommend it highly enough.
Dr. Newell was also a recent guest on The School of War Podcast. Dr. Waller Newell on Putin and Tyranny
The topics covered include the necessity of a “secular apocalypse” (i.e., regime change, a revolution, a war) to facilitate a “tyrannical millennial” (i.e., the utopian rule of the revolutionary and their cronies—i.e. Putin, his generals and oligarchs). Fascinating stuff and a critical feature of nearly all modern tyrants since the French Revolution and Robespierre. Newell does not mention it, but this is also a feature of much Christian eschatological speculation as well.
Newell also addresses a question that tying Putin to closely Russian Orthodoxy does not answer. “How can Putin justify his and his oligarch buddies robbing Russia blind” in the name of recovering the Slavic Soul and Eurasianism? Newell identifies three different sorts of tyrannies, one of which displays its vast power through accumulated wealth. While we westerners may have trouble understanding non-economic motivators for state action, this is not a factor in Putin’s thinking. If the Russian people must endure and do without so that mother Russia fulfills its destiny in liberating its people from Western decadence, so be it.
Newell also addresses the relationship between Putin and Xi, and Xi’s variety of tyranny in China. Different men and situations, yet have much in common. Again, thought provoking stuff.
Newell gave me a lot to think about.